Microprocessors and other related computer components are becoming more and more powerful with increasing capabilities, resulting in increasing amounts of heat generated from these components. Packaged units and integrated circuit die sizes of these components are decreasing or remaining the same, which increases the amount of heat energy given off by the components for a given unit of surface area. Furthermore, as computer related equipment becomes more powerful, more and more components are being placed inside the equipment which is also decreasing in size, resulting in additional heat generation in a smaller volume of space. Increased temperatures can potentially damage the components of the equipment, or reduce the lifetime of the individual components and the equipment. Therefore, large amounts of heat produced by many such integrated circuits must be dissipated, and therefore must be accounted for in designing the integrated circuit mounting and packaging devices.
In current packaging techniques, heat sinks are often applied to the front side of microprocessors having a die to dissipate heat from the microprocessors. The overall size of the heat sinks is limited by the volume constraints of the housing. To improve the amount of heat dissipated from the heat producing components, there is a need to increase convention surface area of the heat sinks without increasing the volume of the heat sinks. The current techniques require the reduction of spacing between fins of the heat sink to increase surface area of the heat sink. However, this results in tighter spacing between fins, which in turn increases air flow resistance resulting in higher thermal resistance.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need to increase convection surface area of a heat sink without having to reduce the spacing between fins for a given volume of heat sink for enhanced heat dissipation by the heat sink.